


oblivion

by NicuCostam



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Physical Abuse, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, sex but everyone is dissociating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 20:56:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14601540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicuCostam/pseuds/NicuCostam
Summary: Eliane writes in her diariesI wear black dresses and perfumes from Nevvara, everything to look like a tormented spirit of Vigil's Keep, and the truth is that those are attires for his funeral. And he loves them.soft porn that no one asked for, and certainly not like this





	oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [zapomnienie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13867764) by [NicuCostam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicuCostam/pseuds/NicuCostam). 



> the idea came to me while writing 12th chapter of my series Szesć Monet [Six of Coins], where my Warden, Falka Cousland, reads Eliane's diaries, where Lady Howe is obviously too _extra_

it is not a tradition or a custom for them. yes, it happened once (out of vengeance, in a sense), then the second (from neglect, absentmindedness, big thing), third... but already at the fourth, it was hard to regard it as an accident. rendon knew, how he would not know when they were in the cellars together and they marked these bottles. he knew they had put them in the old box, under the back wall, partially hidden, so that no one would pick them up.

how many times have they played this game? no matter when it was pleasant enough. and eliane liked when her dear husband wanted to play with her. he would usually pretend to hate it, hide behind masks and grimaces. he pretended, and she let him (what kind of monster would she be without letting him, from time to time, for a little... brutality?)

but when they were together, as she preferred, he was exposed, vulnerable. and she liked him like this the most.

 

so…

rendon knocks on her door, quickly, with strength and without, and this is a sign to start the first act. as in the theater, exciting (although if it was a real orlesian theater, they would still have the entire orchestra as witnesses, and fireworks)

in a mirror, eliane adjusts her hair, a loose bun just above the nape of the neck. there's no hurry, and glances at the candles (the first change, they have burned down halfway, that means night is young), and only when his knocking becomes more and more insistent, she opens the door.

and she goes back from them, back to the chair at the desk, and rendon falls into the room. on his knees, he catches his breath and whispers her name, and in his hand, he still clutches this damned bottle, barely open, hadn't drunk much (maybe the poison gains strength over time, maybe soon they should stop doing it, find a new scenario?)

eliane is sitting, legs crossed, playing with her necklace of crystals and bones, she does not get up. only with a smile, she watches his struggles, as he tries to get up from knees and close the door behind him. so nicely greenish on a face (but he won't vomit, he knows he can't)

he looks at her with something close to hatred and when he finally manages to reach her, step by step, slowly, put the bottle down on the table, he says in a hoarse voice, begins to explain himself:

"i thought you stopped with your attempts to kill me, bitch."

and eliane laughs because it's sweet that he thinks he can talk to her like that. and kick him in the leg, the one with scars, because it's sweet that he thinks he can stand (he knows his part in this spectacle by heart). and he falls to her feet as it should be.

he's breathing heavily, pain in old wounds and nausea attacking, his head leaning against her knee, his eyes glazed. eliane bends over him (like a noblewoman over a pathetic beggar), takes him under chin and forces him to look into her eyes. she has such deep, dark eyes, as the abyss itself, even more beautiful when he holds back tears.

(sometimes eliane strokes him on the head, there is wicked tenderness in gesture)

and in a soft, hushed voice, eliane whispers to his lips:

"my dear, stupid husband."

 

but doesn't kiss him, not yet, first they have to deal with this sweet poison circulating in rendon's body.

sometimes, not very often, eliane wonders what would happen if the first time he reached for wine, she was not at home. if anyone else would be able to recognize on time the symptoms and help him. how beautiful she would look at the funeral ceremony, a sad young widow. sure that no one will prove her crime.

but instead, he survived, and survived the gastric lavage, and will live for many years. and eliane by his side because it is their curse, that they will die together, old, ugly and wrinkled.

it's been a few years since the first bottle, but luckily for the rendon, they already know how to cleanse the organism, without the unpleasantness of the gastric lavage.

eliane releases him, letting him fall back on the floor and gets up, walks to the wall (maybe on her way steps on his fingers), to cabinets and shelves, to bending shelves filled with glass. jars with sunken specimens, poison bottles, nevvaric urns... and a crimson tear-shaped bottle in a silver frame.

they could bring it from tevinter. it could be full of forbidden magic. the substance in the middle moves lazily reflects the light in an almost magical way (eliane is in middle of the process of copying the formula, it's no magic, just a drop of lyrium for taste)

when she returns to him, he's still on all fours, on their beautiful antivian carpet. the next stage of poisoning with their sweet venom. he chokes and mumbles, clenches fists, everything to avoid vomiting. and eliane thinks he needs a little bit of delicacy for all the pain he bravely endures (because that's what it's all about, punishments and rewards). so she helps him sit on a chair, with a hand massaging the warm circles on his back, and a short kiss on the forehead. enough to check the temperature. meantime, with weak fingers, he tries grasp bottle, though he knows exactly how the mixture works.

 

at first, it burns, living fire on the tongue, in the throat, seems to burn a hole in the mind itself, so much pain. but it lasts only a moment and it can be alleviated by sipping milk, then it passes, as if by magic. instead, heat seems to be healing in the whole body, relieving all pain and clear thoughts. however, this effect is also not permanent, only an hour, sometimes two. because the truth about this mixture, about anagapesis, is that it was created by tevinters, thinking only about blood and suffering. so this moment of rest, always, sooner or later, turns into torture, when the pain comes back with redoubled strength and the blood thinners. and rendon knows it all, and yet he reaches for the bottle with his hands, and believes that when the blissful effect passes, eliane will be with him to give him the elfroot and rashvine, and watch over his dreams.

such trust - bordering with insanity.

but he lifts his head and eliane helps him drink these few drops of the mixture. his lips tremble and for a moment, very short, it seems that he wants to say 'thank you'. but this moment passes and he growls and writhes in even more pain and tightens his grip on her wrist with such force that there will surely be bruises (not that it would bother eliane)

 

anagapesis cannot heal him completely, only suppresses the worst, but nausea will remain. once, in a fever, he tried to describe his feelings, that it's like tar, blight, clinging to him from the inside. glued to the stomach's walls, black and sticky, sliding between the bones and muscles, entangling the lungs. alive when he sleeps.

and even though it was described in such a way, that it worked on the imagination, eliane knew that it was no more than fantasy. she brewed the poison herself, she knew what it was doing with the victim, and even though she could not predict the first time it would react with the drug, she knew. eliane knew that whatever was happening in the bowels of her dear husband was not so... so brilliant (because if it was, she would cut him open and apart a long time ago)

 

for a moment, the last drop of elixir trembles on his lips, not even the whole, a half drop, a droplet, and eliane wonders about kissing him and drinking it. in the end, however, she does nothing, and rendon opens his eyes, and although he seems to be looking somewhere from far away, he's lucid. the fact that he still bruises eliane's wrist is not a coincidence (when they're like this, nothing is a coincidence)

 

and then they walk together through a dark corridor, slowly and silently, as if someone were to catch them redhanded. they have been married for years, have two children, it would be illogical if some kind of touch between them was still forbidden. but they sneak up, and holding fingers, hands, as if they were eighteen years old again.

 

the bedroom is full of shadows, and in the faint light of the candles, that the eliane ignites, just after they cross the threshold and the rendon releases her reluctantly, falling on the bed, in those shadows everything seems more dangerous. his eyes, still glassy, but watching her every move. her smile, radiant and sharp as her silver earrings.

the bedroom is also filled with silence, without voices, the only sound is the quiet rustle of clothes. unbuttoning buttons. eliane's dress has many of them, from the waist, where the blouse with long sleeves connects to the narrow skirt, to under the beard, where the gray lace stroke the neck. if she knew in advance that's what their evening would look like, she would wear something else. maybe one of those beautiful, mourning dresses, with rubies at the neckline.

when she finally manages to disentangle herself from all layers, let her clothes fall to the floor, she stands naked beside the bed. with nothing to hide. the candlelight plays on her skin, rounding sharp angles. for a moment she is still fingering with bird's skull with crystal eyes hanging between her breasts but decides not to pull off the ornament. she lies next to the still-dressed rendon.

"tell me, what do you want?" she asks, with a pale hand on his chest.

rendon squints his eyes and falls over her (he winces at restrained nausea), almost inert weight and hand on her neck, pressing eliane to the mattress. and he whispers in her ear, without a hint of warmth or even lust

"i want to get rid of you."

this eliane can understand, she wants it herself. but instead, loud and clear, so that he would surely hear and could not ignore it, she says

"you can't, you are mine and i am yours. and you can't do anything about it."

this makes rendon loudly sneer and he pushes knee between her legs. she squeezes her fingers on his shirt, wanders somewhere with her other hand, clenches her fist and moves knuckles over his ribs. maybe even painfully.

 

and they look into each other's eyes, dark as an abyss in spite of the candle's light, and the fingers on the neck do not seem to clench and scratch anymore, but stroke. touching with delicacy, that both of them usually don't experience. eliane trembles involuntarily, in her mind cursing the cold of the chamber (but that's not it, not really)

rendon in turn, ah rendon... he rubs with his nose like an animal, a dog, and looks for a mouth that could sweetly kiss. with only a small threat of teeth. deeply and slowly, investigating what has been discovered a long time ago. but eliane likes it, from time to time.

in the moments between kisses, she pulls a shirt off of him, throws it somewhere in the corner, and finally, eliane's hands can freely wander over hot skin. touching scars on chest and stomach, on the back. sticking nails into his neck until rendon breaks away from her to moan in pain.

and at this point, they both turn over in the bed, carefully, eliane remembering not to sit on his delicate guts or wounded thigh. at least not yet.

 

rendon smiles under her like... like he smiled when they met. on the edge of consciousness from opioids in his blood. he called eliane his angel, saint, only to curse moments later when she announced leeches as part of his therapy. he was afraid of them then, but now he is used to it. he sees them as what they are: poor, ugly beings that can be turned in his favor.

then rendon threatened her, as eliane said, that she must take off the stitches on his leg. they were badly healing, there could be an infection. he was screaming and struggling, but in the end, years later, he realized that no one would sew him up like an eliane. they've practiced so many times.

 

when eliane slides off and pulls off his pants, she has the opportunity to see the scar on his left thigh. initially, a souvenir of an Orlesian cavalry, after the rebellion. now, however, it is something much more, something that bonds them.

with only the pads of fingers, she moves over the healed tracks. this long and ragged line is from the sword, short and thin - from the scalpel. tiny scratches of glass and a darker spot where the drop of acid fell. with a hand on this alive canvas, eliane wonders how they should celebrate this night.

 

"don't you dare" he whispers as if her touch wasn't welcome. as if he had something to be afraid of.

and eliane, as the ending of the third act, harbinger of impending disaster, kisses his thigh. her tongue moving over the unevenness of skin, while still looking into eyes, sipping this intoxicating mixture of fear and greed and devotion. with a wandering hand, massaging, slowly, painfully slowly, reaching to his member. lazily, as if they had the whole time of this world.

rendon sinks fingers into her hair, twists them, almost painfully, and tries to untangle the sharp pins from hair. take them and hide, out of her reach. in response, eliane bites him, lightly, really, in a place where the leg connects to the lower abdomen.

finally, he untangles her hair when eliane takes him to her lips. hair would fall into her eyes, but rendon has a hand on her head and pushes it away from her forehead. and he looks at her as if the sight before him was the only thing he wants to see until the end of his days. or at least that's what eliane likes to think.

 

eliane recognizes many of his looks, gestures, and trifles that make up the whole character of her husband. however, she can't decipher this one look at all. it's a puzzle that needs to be unraveled, broken up. like rendon himself.

rendon murmurs something senseless and closes his eyes, feeling this trace of teeth. and eliane moans in the depths of her throat hearing this.

another thing about him, which only she knows: how he moans, trembles and begs. how he entwines fingers of his free hand with hers. the way he looks at her. eliane collects this information about him with almost scientific interest. "touch here for moans, and bite here to drive him crazy"

when he finally comes, with her name on lips, she also memorizes this. to be able to later analyze, understand, play with the memory of this amazing sound.

 

after a while, eliane moves higher on the bed so that she is lying on his side next to him. her tangled hair, surround both heads like holo and tickling their shoulders. she reaches for his hand and rendon clenches it into a fist, jerks, but then he lets go. because eliane kisses his fingers, knuckles, with closed eyes and soft lips. and when she looks at him again, with dark eyes, and slowly leads, slips his hand between her legs.

rendon has such long and nice fingers. and he kisses her closed eyelids, not minding smudging everywhere kohl.

somewhere between all this, their fingers and kisses, forgetfulness, eliane's free hand wander on pillows and bedding. until she finds one of her pins. she squeezes it in hand, feeling it stabbing into the skin, not enough to hurt, to split blood, but with the promise of it. rendon, as he is, tries to struggle, but all his other arm is now pressed under eliane's body. so he lets go and bends, crosses those fingers that are in her.

 

when it's all over, she's touching his forehead with lips. the last tenderness before rendon falls asleep - she checks his temperature. eliane covers him with blankets and furs, and again puts on the dress, abandoned on the floor.

when she'll come back with painkillers, rendon will be asleep. she will have to wake him up, for a moment, and give him poppy milk, and a sweet promise that she will look after him whole night.

 

maybe, if she will not be too sleepy, she will embroider her name on his leg.


End file.
